"Flow," Optimum Learning ExperiencesProfessor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Almost everyone has experienced the sense of being so engrossed in what they’re working on that they lose sense of time. It doesn’t feel like work: it’s work and play at the same time. Throughout the 1990s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi became famous for his research on these moments of optimal experience, a state that he called “flow.” Critical to flow is being challenged but not overwhelmed. The ideal level of challenge demanded all of one’s skills and concentration. People were in control and not anxious. Usually, people were working toward a clear goal or objective that was relevant to them.

So when are students and adults most engaged, approaching a flowlike state?It’s highest during sports and extracurricular activities. The adult is usually a coach, parent, or instructor, pushing them to lean into a challenge.Since motivation and engagement are especially important to learning, Csikszentmihalyi was disappointed to see how badly classroom time rated out. Fifty percent of students report that their classes are boring, and one third report surviving the day by goofing off with friends. His research, though, suggested a way to fix this. Csikszentmihalyi recognized that students were most flowlike in moments where they were doing group work or individual work. They were active and participating. The opposite was true for lectures and watching videos.It’s true that students with better grades experience more flow. And many personality dimensions matter, too. But overall, these individual factors were not as powerful as the structural factors described above: whether a situation was challenging, active, and relevant.

“In the long run, kids might be learning far more,” he argues. In today’s classrooms, kids forget most of what they’ve learned very rapidly, because they weren’t truly interested. “When you’re motivated, and when your knowledge is something you can use and keep coming back to, you learn for life.”

Updated: 8 August 2017

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